Apple tested Liquidmetal alloy for iPhone 3G SIM pin

Apple recently signed an exclusive deal to use Liquidmetal Technologies' special amorphous metallic alloys in its consumer electronics devices. But before Apple made such a bold move to single-source critical materials for its products, Apple put the company's abilities to the test by having it make a part for a previous iPhone. Cult of Mac reveals that part to be the SIM ejector tool supplied with the US iPhone 3G.

Apple used the small part—one that is not integral to the device's functionality—to see if the company was capable or producing a custom design to Apple's specifications. Typically, manufacturers prefer to have at least two sources for parts, so that a supply problem from one supplier won't halt manufacturing. Since Liquidmetal is only available from one source, Apple needed to make sure the company could deliver.

Atakan Peker, who co-invented Liquidmetal's unique alloy, said he instantly noticed that the SIM ejector tool supplied with the iPhone 3G was made of the unique material. "That's my metal," Peker told Cult of Mac. "I recognized it immediately. Take it from an expert, that's Liquidmetal."

Apple hasn't revealed its plans to incorporate the material into devices like the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, but Peker suspects it could be used to design a better, lighter antenna than that currently used on the iPhone 4. Cult of Mac notes the material was successfully used to make an antenna for a 3G modem, and Peker said that the alloy can be altered to optimize its performance for that use.

Because of its rigidity and relatively light weight, it could also replace structural materials like aluminum, stainless steel, and glass used in current Apple devices. "This is a highly flexible material," Peker said. "Apple could do some very creative cases."

Peker believes that Apple and its VP of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, is capable of utilizing the materials to come up with very novel design. "It is hard to predict what will come, when you leave such a technology to the imagination and creativity of Apple product development and innovation," he told Cult of Mac. "I won't be surprised with some very interesting products in the future."

Apple might well have chosen the SIM ejector tool as a testbed to sample Liquidmetal's resilience in real world usage, and that's fair enough. But does it really warrant so many awestruck column inches?

It's like feeding the troll. Once you respond to them, you are part of the problem.

Um, if Apple is so brilliant at design, why do their phones even need a SIM ejector tool?

Well they were working on a mind-control interface to allow you to eject it with happy thoughts about puppies, but Steve wanted it to specifically respond only to a pensive nostalgia about Papillons and the engineering team couldn't pull it together in time for the Stevenote. Therefore they were banished to the third circle of the infinite loop (insiders call it the iLoop) and the Liquid Metal team got called in to see what they could do. As they still exist as a part of our reality, their work was obviously acceptable.

Did someone skip a few classes at journalism school or what? What the heck is LiquidMetal and what makes their "amorphous metallic alloy" special? Yes, I can go Google it but any news story that makes you go to another source to find out what the heck the article is talking about fails at a fundamental level.

Did someone skip a few classes at journalism school or what? What the heck is LiquidMetal and what makes their "amorphous metallic alloy" special? Yes, I can go Google it but any news story that makes you go to another source to find out what the heck the article is talking about fails at a fundamental level.

Does anyone know how to tell the difference between a steel one and a Liquid Metal one? I'm a metallurgist and work in a lab and would be curious to put mine through some tests to see what the big deal is. I just got mine out of my 3G box and to me, it looks like plated steel and seems to be able to bend like steel too.

I know this was just an experimental project for Apple. But why SIM ejector? Finger nails will do just fine and it doesn't cost anything extra to the consumers. I'm damn sure that Apple isn’t going to pay for this Liquidmetal alloy. We are.

I know this was just an experimental project for Apple. But why SIM ejector? Finger nails will do just fine and it doesn't cost anything extra to the consumers. I'm damn sure that Apple isn’t going to pay for this Liquidmetal alloy. We are.

Because as we all know Apple is the only company on earth that somehow makes a profit from products they produce. Every other company that I am aware of is paying me to use their products.

But then again, no one forces you or me to read what from the title is obviously toe-curling fanboyism. As long as Ars also writes about my pet things like Amiga and the Opera browser, I guess it all equals out.

edit:

I am confused about the SIM ejector thing too, my GSM phone doesn't have any moving parts, you just slot the SIM in, and pull it out with your fingers if you want it out again. Just like SD-cards etc. Why does it need an ejector, and doesn't it make it hard to find the SIM card if it flies out of the phone?

Um, if Apple is so brilliant at design, why do their phones even need a SIM ejector tool?

Ejecting the SIM card is an extremely rare task for most users. The space that would have been occupied by a finger-operated mechanism can be filled with something else or left out entirely to reduce the phone's size.

This is ars... how many articles did we get about speculation and wild fantasy when apple filed a patent on a touchpad, rumors about said touchpad spiraled out of control, and then finally a touchpad with the buttons on the bottom came out?

Um, if Apple is so brilliant at design, why do their phones even need a SIM ejector tool?

Ejecting the SIM card is an extremely rare task for most users. The space that would have been occupied by a finger-operated mechanism can be filled with something else or left out entirely to reduce the phone's size.

No, they actually made the space occupied by the SIM card bigger by adding a tray that must be ejected with a special tool. The only finger operated mechanism used by other phones is, well, a finger. You place your finger on the SIM card and pull it out. The only moving parts are your finger and the SIM card.

It reminds of a conversation I had with a college teacher who was in love with his slow-ass PowerPC Mac. I was using his computer to copy a document onto a floppy, but when I went to press the eject button on the floppy drive, I discovered that there was no eject button. He smugly informed me of Apple's "intuitive" ejection mechanism - drag the floppy icon to the trash bin. I asked him how is putting something in the trash an intuitive metaphor for retrieving an item I want to keep? But the best part was when the disk got stuck ejecting - we actually had to cycle power to his computer to get the disk out.

Because of its rigidity and relatively light weight, it could also replace structural materials like aluminum, stainless steel, and glass used in current Apple devices. "This is a highly flexible material," Peker said. "Apple could do some very creative cases."

And isn't that what Apple is noted for, creative cases? Imagine Lian Li style cases made of this metal?

Peker believes that Apple and its VP of industrial design, Jonathan Ive, is capable of utilizing the materials to come up with very novel design. "It is hard to predict what will come, when you leave such a technology to the imagination and creativity of Apple product development and innovation," he told Cult of Mac. "I won't be surprised with some very interesting products in the future."

I will. I mean, it is likely to be a solid product, but Apple rarely realizes the full potential of their technologies. For example, the multitouch technology that made it into Apple products is but a pale shadow of what was available from FingerWorks. Likewise, with the brilliant design team from P.A.Semi.

For the most part, I really do like Ive's designs. However, I also think they are largely wasted by glaring feature omissions. (Which are almost certainly not his fault.) Let's have an ExpressCard slot rather than SD on the MacBooks, something more useful than the damn optical drive (more battery/memory/disk), or a microSD slot in the iPhone/Touch/Pad. In the scheme of things, I don't think the new material will be particularly revolutionary.

Um, if Apple is so brilliant at design, why do their phones even need a SIM ejector tool?

Ejecting the SIM card is an extremely rare task for most users. The space that would have been occupied by a finger-operated mechanism can be filled with something else or left out entirely to reduce the phone's size.

No, they actually made the space occupied by the SIM card bigger by adding a tray that must be ejected with a special tool. The only finger operated mechanism used by other phones is, well, a finger. You place your finger on the SIM card and pull it out. The only moving parts are your finger and the SIM card.

It reminds of a conversation I had with a college teacher who was in love with his slow-ass PowerPC Mac. I was using his computer to copy a document onto a floppy, but when I went to press the eject button on the floppy drive, I discovered that there was no eject button. He smugly informed me of Apple's "intuitive" ejection mechanism - drag the floppy icon to the trash bin. I asked him how is putting something in the trash an intuitive metaphor for retrieving an item I want to keep? But the best part was when the disk got stuck ejecting - we actually had to cycle power to his computer to get the disk out.

Not as idiotic as drive letters on a PC. How intuitive is the "C Drive" for my main storage? I think its a metaphor for the C average nature of a Windows PC. = ; )

This is ars... how many articles did we get about speculation and wild fantasy when apple filed a patent on a touchpad, rumors about said touchpad spiraled out of control, and then finally a touchpad with the buttons on the bottom came out?

The same ars that writes about all of Microsoft's failed tablet partners...

I don't understand all this buzz about "liquidmetal". Glassy metals and metal alloys have been around for a really long time, and their properties are pretty well known. Is there something special about this alloy that all the other metallic glass suppliers can't match? Or is this just Apple making a deal to secure a known reliable suppplier while locking others out from the same suppliers?

Either way, I suspect that if anyone else really wanted a similar alloy, they could find a way to get it.

This is ars... how many articles did we get about speculation and wild fantasy when apple filed a patent on a touchpad, rumors about said touchpad spiraled out of control, and then finally a touchpad with the buttons on the bottom came out?

The same ars that writes about all of Microsoft's failed tablet partners...

Basically, iPhone 4 launched, everyone knew it was going to be a success, and now Ars is bored during a period where Apple news is relatively dry (Apple TV redux as "iTV", larger iPads... logical steps for Apple, but not media-circus worthy either). Liquidmetal is brief-worthy, for sure, even as a long brief, but maybe a look at the science of amorphous metals (if only a primer) would be a better angle for this article.

Seems to me like Apple getting exclusive license in perpetuity to this company's brand of amorphous alloys for consumer electronics might actually be newsworthy. Reflexive "Ars posts too much about Apple" poo-pooing to the contrary.

If Ars had explained why the metal is important (if it really is), it would have been nice. If it's already being used in Sansa products, which will no longer be able to use them, that would be interesting to know. Anything would be interesting to know. But this seems like a potentially interesting story if any additional research had gone into the article.

If Ars had explained why the metal is important (if it really is), it would have been nice. If it's already being used in Sansa products, which will no longer be able to use them, that would be interesting to know. Anything would be interesting to know. But this seems like a potentially interesting story if any additional research had gone into the article.

With all the wasted pages I've seen written about this whole liquid metal thing on ars and elsewhere, not a single time have I seen anyone give a reason for why it's important or what make it a revolutionary breakthrough of epic proportions worthy of such drooling over. Much like the apple touchpad that was going to revolutionize the way we interact with computers a few months ago (until it proved to simply be... a touchpad), I think it's safe to assume this whole liquid metal thing amounts to little more than a catchy brand name and what's almost sure to be an incredibly rendered series of commercials at some future date in time.

No, they actually made the space occupied by the SIM card bigger by adding a tray that must be ejected with a special tool. The only finger operated mechanism used by other phones is, well, a finger. You place your finger on the SIM card and pull it out. The only moving parts are your finger and the SIM card.

In most phones the SIM card slot is located underneath the removable battery. Since Apple's iPhone didn't have a removable battery, or even an open-able case (alleged Jobs obsession with minimal openings), they had to find somewhere else to put it.

Bigger than a traditional SIM slot? Yes. Bigger than a finger-able SIM slot would have been in the absence of an accessible battery compartment? No.